EXPERIMENTAL TECHNOLOGY-ASSESSMENT - EXPLORATIONS IN PROCESSES OF INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAM RESEARCH

Technology assessment (TA) is team research that entails the cooperative effort of professionals from diverse disciplines. Whether this effort can be truly integrated into an interdisciplinary assessment is problematic, based on analyses of 24 actual TAs. To probe the situational and process factors that impinge on this interdisciplinary research process, we have performed laboratory simulations on TA-like problems. By controlling several key factors, these sessions have yielded insights into small group interactions and offer suggestive evidence for the conduct of future TAs. In these exercises the role of expertise was downplayed as groups preferred to operate in a common-group learning" mode; epistemological differences emerged in the form of a "pecking order" favoring more quantitative sciences; and performing the leadership role reduced an individual's intellectual contribution to the problem-solving process. These exploratory TA simulations suggest merit in further efforts at controlled study of complex interdisciplinary processes. © 1979."